A very Schwartzian meme

My Jewess princess Katie Schwartz came up with a great idea. She's begun a new meme that asks a bunch of questions of Obama supporters and since I am powerless to refuse her anything when it comes to the internets I now give you my answers to her probing questions:

1) What is your name (nickname, whatever you're comfortable sharing), your age (range), gender, occupation, income bracket (range), how you identify (gay/straight/whatever)? Married/Single/Divorced? Kids (how many)?
Name: blog name-Dr. Monkey, real name-Steve
Age-45 and damn proud to say so considering my health history
Gender-Male
I'm a straight white guy who is a member of PFLAG and I'm in a long term monogamous relationship with a woman who I refer to on this blog as Sparky. We have no children of our own but if you have kids and we like them then we think of them as ours, just don't ask us for money to help raise them.

2) What are the most important issues to you in this presidential election and why?
The two biggest issues for me are ending the immoral war in Iraq and getting universal health care for all Americans. The war is sapping our tax dollars faster than a fat kid goes through sheet cake and it makes no sense to me that we can waste billions of dollars on a war for ExxonMobil and Shell oil but we have no money for health care for all Americans. All I am asking for in the health care area is that we get the same health care that Bush McCain and Dick Cheney have had all their public lives. All I want in the war of terror area is for us to get out of Iraq this second and to let a pan-Arabic force take over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

3) Why do you think voters should vote for Obama/Biden, what differentiates this ticket from McCain/Palin?
I think people should vote for Obama/Biden if they want to get out of the current mess that 30 years of conservative politics has drug us into. What makes them different from Bush McCain/Palin is that they want us out of Iraq, want a more equitable health system for all of us, and they believe in using the power of the federal government to help the poor, the downtrodden, the working class, and the middle class. Obama/Biden are not perfect and they'll still kowtow too much to corporations for my taste and they'll keep throwing money down the rathole known as the Pentagon but they are a far sight better than continuing the failed conservative policies of Bush McCain/Palin.

4) If McCain/Palin wins this election, where do you see our country going in the next four years?
If they win then I see this country not moving forward at all. I see it staying in this same awful place where the rich keep getting more obscenely rich, the wars drag on forever because heaven knows that whatever "gains" we make over there will be "fragile" and we'll have to stay to protect them. I see more deregulation that will cost more lives, line the pockets of the super rich, and further damage our nation and our economy. I see people staying fearful and afraid to speak out because dissent will not be tolerated by a President with a hair trigger temper who has shown he'll say or do anything to stay in power. I see gays, lesbians, women, and minorities losing many gains they have fought for over the past 50 years. I see science and reason mocked and shunted aside in favor of the radical right wing religious agenda. I see freedom of choice being taken away from women and yet more voter caging. I see a version of America that is my worst nightmare.

5) Economically, where do you think this country is today and how do you think Obama/Biden can make a positive impact?
As the latest investment bank failure as shown us, the economy of this country is in the toilet. We've let them deregulate things too far and we're sliding backwards to the era just before the Great Depression. The gap between the haves and the have nots is widening every day and it's going to get worse under Bush McCain/Palin because they want to make more tax cuts to businesses and give their rich friends bigger tax cuts while we work harder and harder for what little we managed to get.

History has shown time and time again that the economy does better under Democrats than it does under Republicans and this is because more people share in the prosperity. Obama/Biden can make a positive impact by taxing the rich more, ending the Bush tax cuts, taxing companies that outsource jobs, and providing tax breaks and incentives to people and companies that provide "green" jobs that will aid us in becoming self sustaining energy wise. And by ending the senseless immoral war we can redirect that money to go to fixing our crumbling infrastructure that Bush McCain/Palin have ignored for years.

6) In the past 8-years, how do you think this country has changed under the Bush regime? Have you been affected by these changes? If so, in what ways?
Too many changes to go into now but I'll highlight the biggest ones:

• loss of civil liberties


• the growth of domestic spying


• yet more insane privatization of essential governmental services

When our own government can call anyone they please an "enemy combatant" and thereby imprison us indefinitely and take away all our constitutional rights then we're all affected by the changes Bush hath wrought.

7) I have read that Palin is considered the new voice of feminism, which is offensive in my opinion. Of equal concern are her views on abortion and the removal of books from libraries. I'd like to know what you think about all of that and how you feel about McCain choosing Palin as a running mate. And what kind of message you think that sends to women?
The message that women should get from the cynical politically calculating choice of Sarah Palin as Bush McCain's Veep is that you are stupid. They obviously think that a woman who is the polar opposite of Hillary Clinton is as qualified as Hillary is and that you ladies should vote for him because his running mate has a vagina.

The message I get from his choice of an inexperienced evangelical female is that the old man will do anything to be elected. He picked her to satisfy the religious right, who he once scorned. As much as they bray and brag about her limited experience she is the least qualified person to be Vice President since Dan Quayle. My worries about the leadership of Bush jr and Bush McCain pale in comparison to the worries I have about an anti choice, anti science, religious nut bag like her.

I tag Little Merry Sunshine, Liberality, Helenwheels, and Diva Jood to do this meme if they so choose because I'd like to see their answers to these great questions from the great Katie Schwartz.